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For our sixth Cook-Off, we're going to be making pad thai. You've surely eaten this Thai restaurant staple dozens of times, marvelling at the sweet, sour, hot, and salty marriage on your plate. There are lots of variations of pad thai floating around the internet, including one by mamster at the eGCI Thai Cooking course. While there is one ingredient -- rice noodles -- that may be hard for some to find, most ingredients or substitutes are available at your local grocer. And, if you're new to Thai cooking, isn't now a good time to get your first bottle of fish sauce or block of tamarind?

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So I've just reserved every Thai cook book our library system has to offer. And, asked my mother to reserve every one my library system doesn't have that her's has.

I hope someone else will chime in on internet sources. I can get fresh rice noodles and everything else within a bike ride (a long bike ride, mind you) from my house). I happen to have everything I need, with the exception of the fresh stuff, at my house at the present time.

BTW, the "preserved radish" referred to in Mamster's recipe is sold here in plastic bag packages as "salted radish." I'll take some pictures of ingredients that I can easily find in the next couple of days.

My family loves pad thai. I just have a lot of trouble with the rice noodles. They tend to be either stiff or mush. I need help!

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Finally, thanks to the internet, remember that you're never too late for an eGullet cook-off. While all have a specific starting time, none have a end time, and there are many of us eager to see what you will do with the cook-off recipes. So don't hesitate to contribute if you're finding this thread weeks or months after its start: your posting your own ideas, questions, or results can bump activity back up on this thread in no time!

I feel like I've finally got the hang of that one, but I might try making my own noodles this time. That would be fun, especially since I have, like, 10 lbs of rice flour taking up way too much space in my pantry. (Korean pine needle rice cake project that I still haven't gotten around to...but at least I finally located my pine needles! )

Snowangel, I think the thing with the noodles is that they really seem to differ from brand to brand. After a couple of "too mushy" tries I now err on the side of slightly too stiff when soaking-- then I pull off pieces and try them as I'm cooking. If they are still too stiff, I put in a little more sauce and stir fry them longer until they are just al-dente. (All the "fresh" ingredients get added at the end so you can't really overcook the dish.)

Oh, and despite what David Thompson says, I got impatient once and soaked the noodles for 15 minutes in warm water. Worked fine.

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Finally, thanks to the internet, remember that you're never too late for an eGullet cook-off. While all have a specific starting time, none have a end time, and there are many of us eager to see what you will do with the cook-off recipes. So don't hesitate to contribute if you're finding this thread weeks or months after its start: your posting your own ideas, questions, or results can bump activity back up on this thread in no time!

Absolutely! There are many among us who will be very happy to see your results!

For our sixth Cook-Off, we're going to be making pad thai.

I feel like I've finally got the hang of that one, but I might try making my own noodles this time. That would be fun, especially since I have, like, 10 lbs of rice flour taking up way too much space in my pantry.

Snowangel, I think the thing with the noodles is that they really seem to differ from brand to brand. After a couple of "too mushy" tries I now err on the side of slightly too stiff when soaking-- then I pull off pieces and try them as I'm cooking. If they are still too stiff, I put in a little more sauce and stir fry them longer until they are just al-dente. (All the "fresh" ingredients get added at the end so you can't really overcook the dish.)

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Ohhhh, I am excited to try this. I love Thai food, and Pad Thai is a favorite.

I have tried it before, and got the noodles cooked satisfactorily, but my problem is with the sauce. I love the flavorful, slightly sweet, slightly spicy sauce in the restaurants, but mine turned out (Time 1) so spicy I couldn't eat it, and (Time 2) muddy and icky in appearance and flavor. I'm going to look for a good recipe from among your suggestions. Thank you!

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I guess another of my problems with the noodles is that they are all broken up by the time the dish is done. They aren't the long, silky looking strands you see in the cookbooks, or that I ate lo those many years ago in Bangkok.

I've also perused Mamster's recipe, as well as those in the Thai/SE Asian cookbooks I own (3 total) and realize that there is some difference in which the order of ingredients are added to the pan. As well, there seems to be some difference on whether the sauce is just tamarind and nam pla, just rice vinegar and nam pla or a combination of all three.

And, as I recall from the almost 10 years I lived in Thailand, "authentic" pad thai is in the eye of the beholder. They were all slightly different. Slightly different taste, slightly diferent widths of noodles, and had I paid more attention than a teenage girl would while the cook was cooking, I have no doubt I would have noted different cooking techiniques with every different dish.

Susan Fahning aka "snowangel"

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I guess another of my problems with the noodles is that they are all broken up by the time the dish is done. They aren't the long, silky looking strands you see in the cookbooks, or that I ate lo those many years ago in Bangkok.

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I've also perused Mamster's recipe, as well as those in the Thai/SE Asian cookbooks I own (3 total) and realize that there is some difference in which the order of ingredients are added to the pan. As well, there seems to be some difference on whether the sauce is just tamarind and nam pla, just rice vinegar and nam pla or a combination of all three.

And, as I recall from the almost 10 years I lived in Thailand, "authentic" pad thai is in the eye of the beholder. They were all slightly different. Slightly different taste, slightly diferent widths of noodles, and had I paid more attention than a teenage girl would while the cook was cooking, I have no doubt I would have noted different cooking techiniques with every different dish.

Heh heh . . . this sounds sorta like gumbo. Everybody makes it differently. Everybody uses different ingredients. Everybody has a trick up their sleeve. And with all of that . . . Everybody knows what it is. And, though pad thai is pad thai in a way, it is probably never really the same.

And, can we say that the ingredients are somewhat . . . um . . . flexible? Is this one of those dishes where, beyond the basics (sort of like gumbo) that the intent is to use what you have? I am just trying to wrap my head around the character of the dish. I have eaten it at restaurants and tried it a couple of times long ago but I never really thought about it a lot. (Mine wasn't that great. I think I didn't know what I was doing with the noodles.)

Perfect for a cook-off.

Linda LaRose aka "fifi"

"Having spent most of my life searching for truth in the excitement of science, I am now in search of the perfectly seared foie gras without any sweet glop." Linda LaRose

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And, can we say that the ingredients are somewhat . . . um . . . flexible? Is this one of those dishes where, beyond the basics (sort of like gumbo) that the intent is to use what you have? I am just trying to wrap my head around the character of the dish. I have eaten it at restaurants and tried it a couple of times long ago but I never really thought about it a lot. (Mine wasn't that great. I think I didn't know what I was doing with the noodles.)

I agree. I have at least six different pad thai recipes in my cookbooks and each one is very different. I think that that is part of the interest here, determining what effects different ingredients have, and at what times. I also think -- and Malawry's recipe bears this out -- that we'll find versions that don't have too many ingredients that will be hard for folks without good Asian stores to find.

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Thanks, Rochelle! That is a good-looking recipe. And everyone has already given some good input. I'm loving this!

Susan, I hope you don't mind if this other Susan jumps in with a photo, too. I wasn't sure what I was looking for when I first started on my sweetened salted radish search, and I ended up with both of these:

One says sweet salted turnip and the other says preserved radish (sweet). Hopefully this will give those of you unfamiliar a visual idea of what to look for. I had also been looking for the little dried shrimps for quite a while and recently found them.

I have a good source for rice noodles. It's in a town 30 miles from here, but it's worth the drive. However, I have ordered stuff, including Jasmine rice and sticky rice, from both Temple of Thai and ImportFood.com on more than one occasion, and I've been very pleased with the quality and the prices. I imagine that they would be reliable sources of rice noodles.

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I've been meaning to learn how to make Pad Thai for-just-ever, so thanks for the impetus!

I skimmed through chrisamirault's links above & have two quick questions:

1) A couple of posts in there implied that meat/chicken pad thai is not authentic. I'm not able to eat fish or seafood, so I was initially thinking about doing a carnivore's Pad Thai, but would it be better just to go vegetarian? If meat is authentic, what would be the most appropriate?

2) can anyone confirm (the original poster wasn't certain) that vegetarian fish sauce is called Nuoc Mam Chay?

Thanks, this will be fun!

E

Do you suffer from Acute Culinary Syndrome? Maybe it's time to get help...

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For what it's worth, in one of the Thai restaurants I go to they have shrimp Pad Thai, pork Pad Thai, chicken Pad Thai, vegetarian Pad That, etc. listed on the menu. Go for whatever appeals to you. I'm glad you got the impetus! I'm not sure about the name of vegetarian fish sauce, but my bet is that somebody here will.

While I was out burning off calories in my walk/run today, naturally I was thinking about food... where for my colleague and me to go for our dinner meeting tonight, and what thickness of rice noodles to use in this cook-off!! I understand this is a matter of personal taste/preference, as well. What do you all prefer, and why?

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After making it many more times, I've come to the conclusion that the phad thai recipe I posted has too much tamarind. I've been playing around with the proportions but haven't come up with something I like much better yet. So I'm in, too.

Also, Iris is really into phad thai lately. The spicier the better.

Isn't David Thompson's recipe the one that calls for "a handful of rice noodles"? What a tease.

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Geez, Mamster I dunno... I thought the 3/4cup Tamarind water was dead-on. I did notice that when I heated up the Tpaste in water, the more time on the heat wrings out more flavour, so depending on how dense the tamarind "water" is, will affect the pungency of the sauce. Your recipe is the only one I've made that comes close to our local Thai Take out so it works for me. Sheesh, I'm in!

"I took the habit of asking Pierre to bring me whatever looks good today and he would bring out the most wonderful things," - bleudauvergne

Not sacrelige, but basically pointless, because the dish is totally out of balance without them. You'd be better off making Pad Siew, Lard Na, or Pad Kee Maow, three other Thai noodle dishes that are as equally as good, which have no peanuts.

Here's a Kee Maow Noodles I made a while back:

The predominant flavor profile in this dish is chili and basil -- "Kee Maow" means "drunken" because it is typically served as a hangover remedy.

If you're going to go no peanuts (last time I made them, I checked the bag of peanuts, which was empty -- thank you family, for once again putting an empty container back into the cupboard ), so I served it with lime wedges and a little dish of rice vinegar with sliced bird chilies, and it was just fine. Yes, I missed the peanuts, but if you've never had it with peanuts, you wouldn't miss them, I think. These are traditional accompaniments at the holes in the wall that sell pad thai in Bangkok.

Susan Fahning aka "snowangel"

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